Edwardus Dei gracia.
Similar stanzas occur also in Modern English poets: a a a4 B2 in Wyatt, p. 99, a a a5 B3 in G. Herbert, p. 18, &c. We find others with the formula a a a4 b2 a a a4 b2 in Dunbar’s Inconstancy of Love, and with the formula a a a4 b3 c c c4 b3 d d d4 b3, in Dorset (Poets, vi. 512); there are also stanzas of five lines, e.g. a a a a4 B2 (Wyatt, p. 80).
An older poem in Ritson’s Anc. Songs, i. 140 (Welcom Yol), has the same metre and form of stanza, but with a refrain verse of two measures and a two-lined refrain prefixed to the first stanza: A B4 a a a4 B2 c c c4 B2. A similar extended stanza is found in Wyatt (p. 108) A3 b b b3 A3 B2; A3 c c c3 A3 B2. There are also in modern poetry similar isometrical stanzas, as in Swinburne (Poems, ii. 108) on the scheme a a a b5, c c c b5, d d d b5, e e e f5, g g g f5, h h h f5; in Campbell (p. 73) a a a b4, c c c b4, d d d b4; and in M. Arnold, The Second Best (p. 49), with feminine endings in the main part of the stanza, a ~ a ~ a ~ b4, c ~ c ~ c ~ b4, d ~ d ~ d ~ b4, &c.
II. Bipartite unequal-membered isometrical stanzas.
§ 254. These are of greater number and variety. The shortest of them, however, viz. stanzas of four lines, are found only in Modern English; first of all, stanzas arranged according to the formula a a b a; in this case b can be used as refrain also, as in Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, Song I (Grosart, i. 75):
Doubt you to whom my Muse these notes entendeth,
Which now my breast, surcharg’d to musick lendeth!
To you, to you, all song of praise is due,
Only in you my song begins and endeth.
Similar stanzas of four-foot iambic and of two-foot iambic-anapaestic lines occur in Tennyson, The Daisy (p. 270), and in Longfellow, King Olaf and Earl Sigwald (p. 573).